219: Turn Your Hobby into a Business and Achieve Massive Blogging Success with Katie Hornor

Katie Hornor is an international speaker and entrepreneur based in Mexico, where she homeschools five children while running multiple online businesses. She is the founder of BloggingSuccessfully.com and The Blog Connection, a coaching platform dedicated to helping hobby bloggers transform their passion into profitable online ventures. As an author and online business coach, Katie specializes in guiding bloggers through strategies for growing email lists, driving traffic, and creating digital products.

Katie Hornor coaches hobby bloggers to turn their website into a real business. She focuses on your traffic, people, plan, schedule, and hiring.

Hire based on your own weaknesses. For example, hire people to create pinnacle images, Facebook ads, or technical website actions, and give them a 2 to 3 month trial period to test them out.

When improving a blog, Katie looks at the following areas:

  1. Is the website clean and inviting?
  2. Is there an offer, a freebie that people can get in exchange for subscribing? Is it an offer that your audience wants, based on Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat research?
  3. Is Google Analytics installed and what demographic reads the blog? Based on this, when are people online so we know what time to post?
  4. Are there any low-hanging product ideas or affiliate programs for this blog?
  5. Does this website get in front of one audience per week? (Blog, Facebook, email.)

Quotes:                                                                                                                                   

“When we move from hobby to business, we’re changing that entire mindset where what I do is not about me anymore, it’s about how I serve my people.” – Katie Hornor

“Businesses would not be a business without people. And anytime you have people, you have relationships.” – Katie Hornor

“No one needs more spam or junk mail. You need to be a person offering something of value.” – Katie Hornor

Takeaways:

01:47 Shift from hobby blogging to a business requires changing your mindset from just writing to earning income.

07:55 Your website’s first five seconds are critical in showing visitors exactly what problem you solve for them.

17:53 Looking at your website and social media statistics is crucial for understanding growth and making smart business choices.

20:16 When hiring team members, use a clear three-month trial period to ensure a good working relationship without hard feelings.

24:15 Building business relationships creates an environment where everyone can grow together.

Resources